Background
Bernard Taylor was born in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1844.
Bernard Taylor was born in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1844.
He was one of three men received the Medal of Honor for gallantry, Taylor rescuing wounded commander Lieutenant Charles King, while battling the Western Apache near Sunset Pass in Arizona on November 1, 1874. He later enlisted in the United States Army in Washington, District of Columbia as a private with Company A of the 5th Assigned to frontier duty in the Arizona Territory, Taylor saw action during the Apache Wars and eventually rose the rank of sergeant. He was described as "an admirable specimen of the Irish-American soldier and "hailed as a daring, resolute, intelligent man, and a non-commissioned officer of high merit".
On November 1, 1874, Taylor left Camp Verde with a small cavalry patrol headed by First Lieutenant Charles King in pursuit of a hostile Apache war party.
After making camp at Sunset Pass, near the Little Colorado River, Taylor and a group of Apache Indian scouts accompanied King to a high vantage point where he could better observe the surrounding area. While climbing to the summit of a steep mesa, between half to three-fourths of a mile from the camp, the party was ambushed by a band of Tonto Apaches.
They had been concealed in the rocks waiting for their approach. King was seriously wounded in the first moments of the attack as an arrow struck his head and another cut the muscles at the corner of his eye.
He was finally brought down by a rifle shot which hit his right arm near the shoulder blade and collapsed to the ground.
Taylor rescued the half conscious officer and, while under heavy fire, carried him half a mile back to their encampment. King was brought back to Camp Verde while Lieutenant George O. Eaton, then commandant of the camp, continued the pursuit. Near the end of the campaign, two days after being issued the Ministry of Health, Taylor died of lung congestion at Camp Verde shortly before his regiment began its homeward march.
His body was taken to California where it was interred at San Francisco National Cemetery.